There are no monuments of other times,
No records of the past--its woes or crimes.
The roar of cannon and the clang of arms
Have never shook thy bosom with alarms,
And never has thy calm and peaceful flood
Been stained to crimson with a brother's blood.
The sportsman's rifle only hast thou heard
Scaring the rabbit and the timid bird;
Or may be in the savage days of yore
The wolf and bear have bled upon thy shore.
But rural peace and beauty reign to-night;
The harvest moon illumes with holy light
Each wave that ripples in its onward flow
O'er rock concealed amid the depths below,
And gives a strange, wild beauty to the scene
On either shore, where trees of evergreen,
Hemlocks and firs, their dusky shadows fling,
Around whose trunks the heavy mosses cling,
With maples clad in crimson, gold and brown,
Bright like the west when first the sun goes down.

Here from this summit where I often roam
I can behold my cot, my humble home;
There I was born, and when this life is o'er
I hope to sleep upon the river's shore.
There is the orchard which I helped to rear,
It well repays my labor year by year:
One apple tree towers high above the rest
Where every spring a blackbird has its nest.
Sweet Lily used to stand beneath the bough